Welcome to the wiki page for tonight's conversation. Hopefully you enjoy the chance to play in one of new tools that are available to all of us through the read / write web. If you would like to have discussions about anything that comes up, please go to the Discussion Tab and share ideas / start conversations.
A couple weeks ago at a Principals' Meeting we began the conversation around our learning portal and how it may help support the dramatic changes that are occuring with how students learn as part of our district's commitment to Teaching and Learning with Technology.
UNESCO says there will be more "educated people" in the next 30 years than in the sum of human history to date. (Cited in the TED Talks video with Sir Ken Robinson)
The Change: The Read / Write Web - Web 2.0
We have moved from Web 1.0 to the read / write web. We used to accept that the web was somewhere we would go and "surf" for information. Now in the Web 2.0 world, we want to collaborate and participate.
Now, we use the 2.0 term to put on many things. We talk about Learning 2.0 and School 2.0. For some it is simply about taking what we have always done, and do it in a digital enviornment. What is much more exciting is that in the "2.0 Era" we can transform teaching and learning.
There are currently more than 6000 Web 2.0 applications available. It has to be about more than the tools but also the craft of using them.
Changes Outside of School
While we are talking about these changes in our school system, the changes are going on everywhere
If provincial politics are more your style both the Liberals and New Democrats have Facebook groups to join (login required)
Media
We can now decide what is news with sites like Digg and even traditional sites like CNN are embracing participation through their iReports and organizing news by popularity.
Industries like music and movies are wrestling with how to deal with all these changes.
Business
We don't look to the newspaper classfied ads or even the Buy and Sell to exchange goods when we can use sites like Craigslist for free.
Online shopping shows no signs of slowing down, and those retailers without a presense online are facing trouble.
Industries from books to electronics to travel have been transformed by the participant driven web.
Challenges For Teachers and Schools
We know there are statistics coming out on a regular basis that students are different than in the past
more than 70% of people aged 15 - 34 are actively using social networks online
teens aged 12 - 19 spend 25% of their media time on the internet
66% of high school student get their news and information from the internet
The notion of privacy is changing and there seems to be a shift in what we believe about intellectual property and copyright and leading to new definitions like the one that governs this wiki in Creative Commons.
We have to help students (and ourselves) new skills of information / digital literacy to function in this world. Students need to know that they can track the history of their sites and that they still need to find the owner of what they read. When we limited students to a few books in the library it was easy, now we have sites like this, and this, and even this that require a new ability to be critical of all information.
We are struggling how to deal with tools and gadgets that have become appendages for our students and the jury is still out on how to use commercial social networking sites in school. Even when we block sites, students quickly can find ways to get around this if they want.
"The model of pedagogy needs to change to address the needs of a generation who have grown up participating, not just being broadcast to" Don Tapscott (author of Growing Up Digital and Wikinomics)
Traditional Schools Vs. Networks
The Ruels Are Changing
We are very used to school happening from 9 - 3 in a building. The rules are changing. The competition is still Collingwood and Mulgrave for our students, but it is also every DL school in our province, and soon the competition will be Stanford.
No longer are teachers and schools the keeper of knowledge. Knowledge is available for free everywhere. MIT has made all its courses available for free and translated many of them into other languages through its open learning model. The same is true for many other universities around the world.
Education also exists in a completely virtual world, like in Second Life. Harvard, among other schools, have courses that exist completely within this virtual game.
To educate such students, we don’t so much need a faculty as we need an intellectual network. The program has a large pool of loosely affiliated faculty members who participate in an ad hoc manner depending on the needs and interests of individual students: Sometimes they may contribute nothing to the program for several years and then get drawn into a research or thesis project that requires their particular expertise. Our students’ thesis advisers come not only from other universities around the world but also from industry; they include Bollywood choreographers, game designers, soap-opera writers, and journalists. We encourage our students to network broadly and draw on the best thinking about their topic, wherever they can find it. Henry Jenkins
Tools That We Are Using to Build Our Networks
We share our lives through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Even younger students have found a home in the social networking world.
We share our photos and our videos
We share conversations using MSN or Skype or Twitter or . . . .
We find ways to share our favourite websites and our research
We share our notes from class and we can do it as a mindmap if we want
We share our music and our podcasts using a range of audio sharing services.
We even construct our knowledge together
It is all about collaboration and participation. Millions of people are participating in the new social networking services.
A New Backpack
For students there is a Web 2.0 Backpack that they can carry around with them, replacing everything from textbooks to calendars to calculators.
Some of the "Cool" Tools To Impress Your Friends
If you want to snap a picture or record a video of anything on your desktop try Jing
You can edit your photos for free with Picnik
There are also some interesting online office tools that are great for collaborating like this one from Google and this one from Zoho.
If you want simple instructions to use RSS feeds, Social Bookmarking, or a number of other tools try Commoncraft Videos.
You can now convert any file type to any other file type.
Try Pageflakes that let's you stop looking for information, and lets your information come to you.
If you have a burnng question you can Text Google at 466453 for the answer.
Or
If you are looking for some other videos that challenge our thinking about the current system:
Or for a more global view of this change, any video or audio cast from the TED series
A Preview of Some of Our New Tools That Are Coming to West Vancouver
School Connects will allow all teachers to access their files from home and have greater control over computers in the classroom
Microsoft Office 2007 will become the new standard in the district, we won't need to worry about getting versions that don't open
Sharepoint Learning Portal will be the common platform for district learning and business
Scholaris will allow us to integrate student data in the platform
BCeSIS will allow us to "talk" electronically on a province-wide student information system
If We Are Not Moving Forward We are Falling Behind
We now can do simple things that we never could have done even a decade ago. More importantly, we can tell stories, new stories in ways that have never been possible before. We can use technology to help prepare students not just for 21st century jobs, but also 21st century citizenship.
How do we learn to help our students leverage the technologies they are already using instead of have them check them at the door? (Especially when our students can get around our efforts anyway.)
How do we lead the change? How do we re-envision teaching and learning for a vastly changed world?
How do we push the learning agenda and embed the technologies?
How do we take the new technologies and blend them with what we know about instruction and assessment?
If we don't really know what learning / schools will look like in 10 years, where do we start?
Once you leave tonight, please go to the Discussion Page at least over the next week to continue the conversation
Simon Fraser University Presentation
February 11, 2009
Welcome to the wiki page for tonight's conversation. Hopefully you enjoy the chance to play in one of new tools that are available to all of us through the read / write web. If you would like to have discussions about anything that comes up, please go to the Discussion Tab and share ideas / start conversations.
A couple weeks ago at a Principals' Meeting we began the conversation around our learning portal and how it may help support the dramatic changes that are occuring with how students learn as part of our district's commitment to Teaching and Learning with Technology.
This is a continuation of that conversation.
The World is Changing - How Do We Challenge Our Assumptions and Unlearn What We Know
The Change: The Read / Write Web - Web 2.0
We have moved from Web 1.0 to the read / write web. We used to accept that the web was somewhere we would go and "surf" for information. Now in the Web 2.0 world, we want to collaborate and participate.
Now, we use the 2.0 term to put on many things. We talk about Learning 2.0 and School 2.0. For some it is simply about taking what we have always done, and do it in a digital enviornment. What is much more exciting is that in the "2.0 Era" we can transform teaching and learning.
There are currently more than 6000 Web 2.0 applications available. It has to be about more than the tools but also the craft of using them.
Changes Outside of School
While we are talking about these changes in our school system, the changes are going on everywhere
Challenges For Teachers and Schools
We know there are statistics coming out on a regular basis that students are different than in the past
The notion of privacy is changing and there seems to be a shift in what we believe about intellectual property and copyright and leading to new definitions like the one that governs this wiki in Creative Commons.
We have to help students (and ourselves) new skills of information / digital literacy to function in this world. Students need to know that they can track the history of their sites and that they still need to find the owner of what they read. When we limited students to a few books in the library it was easy, now we have sites like this, and this, and even this that require a new ability to be critical of all information.
We are struggling how to deal with tools and gadgets that have become appendages for our students and the jury is still out on how to use commercial social networking sites in school. Even when we block sites, students quickly can find ways to get around this if they want.
Traditional Schools Vs. Networks
The Ruels Are Changing
We are very used to school happening from 9 - 3 in a building. The rules are changing. The competition is still Collingwood and Mulgrave for our students, but it is also every DL school in our province, and soon the competition will be Stanford.
No longer are teachers and schools the keeper of knowledge. Knowledge is available for free everywhere. MIT has made all its courses available for free and translated many of them into other languages through its open learning model. The same is true for many other universities around the world.
Education also exists in a completely virtual world, like in Second Life. Harvard, among other schools, have courses that exist completely within this virtual game.
Blogs are being used by administrators, teachers, and students to connect to networks of people locally and globally.
To educate such students, we don’t so much need a faculty as we need an intellectual network. The program has a large pool of loosely affiliated faculty members who participate in an ad hoc manner depending on the needs and interests of individual students: Sometimes they may contribute nothing to the program for several years and then get drawn into a research or thesis project that requires their particular expertise. Our students’ thesis advisers come not only from other universities around the world but also from industry; they include Bollywood choreographers, game designers, soap-opera writers, and journalists. We encourage our students to network broadly and draw on the best thinking about their topic, wherever they can find it. Henry Jenkins
Tools That We Are Using to Build Our Networks
We share our lives through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Even younger students have found a home in the social networking world.
We share our photos and our videos
We share conversations using MSN or Skype or Twitter or . . . .
We find ways to share our favourite websites and our research
We share our notes from class and we can do it as a mindmap if we want
We share our music and our podcasts using a range of audio sharing services.
We even construct our knowledge together
It is all about collaboration and participation. Millions of people are participating in the new social networking services.
A New Backpack
For students there is a Web 2.0 Backpack that they can carry around with them, replacing everything from textbooks to calendars to calculators.
Some of the "Cool" Tools To Impress Your Friends
If you want to snap a picture or record a video of anything on your desktop try Jing
You can edit your photos for free with Picnik
There are also some interesting online office tools that are great for collaborating like this one from Google and this one from Zoho.
If you want simple instructions to use RSS feeds, Social Bookmarking, or a number of other tools try Commoncraft Videos.
You can now convert any file type to any other file type.
Try Pageflakes that let's you stop looking for information, and lets your information come to you.
If you have a burnng question you can Text Google at 466453 for the answer.
Or
If you are looking for some other videos that challenge our thinking about the current system:
Or for a more global view of this change, any video or audio cast from the TED series
A Preview of Some of Our New Tools That Are Coming to West Vancouver
If We Are Not Moving Forward We are Falling Behind
Once you leave tonight, please go to the Discussion Page at least over the next week to continue the conversation